Technical Education for Kenya’s ‘Lost’ Youth

Rafiki Ya Maisha, meaning Friends for Life in Swahili, is a Franco-Kenyan nonprofit organization that aims to provide training and education to the youth in rural Kenya, in order to reduce unemployment, strife and poverty in the region. Thank you for visiting Rafiki Ya Maisha’s website!

Who We Are

Rafiki Ya Maisha is a work of partnership and solidarity between France and Kenya. It was created in 2004 by two long-time friends, Claire Mathijsen Roth (France) and Elizabeth Tunoi (Kenya), who saw the need for education for Kenya’s ‘lost’ youth. The organization’s long-term vision is to build a Polytechnic school, which will become a landmark school in the region and enable young adults to provide for their families at large and improve the community.

What We Do

Click above to watch a video clip about Rafiki Ya Maisha, to listen to Elizabeth Tunoi, one of the Presidents, and to learn more about our work.

We are building a Polytechnic school offering a degree program, workshops, a library, a theater, classrooms, computers and boarding facilities for 130 students. Graduates can start their own businesses or develop a career.

Where We Operate

Rafiki Ya Maisha came to life in Chepkanga, a rural village near Eldoret, Kenya in Africa in order to provide education and training to young Kenyans living in rural areas, who are jobless and often unskilled. The inhabitants of Chepkanga are mainly peasant and middle level farmers whose mainstay is maize and wheat farming. Secondary school education for their children is financially unfeasible, so we are here to help, with your assistance.

Rafiki Ya Maisha is a non-profit charity operating in Kenya, Africa providing education and training to the ‘lost’ youth in rural Kenya – those whose families cannot afford further education for their children. Your donations will help this cause – no sum is too small and every cent makes a difference in the lives of these kids. Each time you donate, you support student education in Catering & Food Technology, Fashion Design, Information Technology, Electric & Electronic Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Hairdressing. With these newly gained skills, young adults in the region are empowered to enter the workforce, and contribute to the economy and sustainability of their country.

What do we do?

Currently, we are in the process of building a sustainable Polytechnic school for the region. Rafiki Ya Maisha’s charity education efforts are endorsed by the government in Kenya, who has provided land for the school, and by the local community, who has mobilized itself to provide greater opportunities to its youth. With our continued joint efforts, the Polytechnic school will become a landmark in rural Kenya, and in Africa as a whole. We are mobilizing to raise $50,000 to build a school that will house 130 students and offer 8 workshops. Until then, students will be working in temporary classrooms and using donated equipment.

A student’s testimony:

We received advanced electronic sewing machines from Rafiki Ya Maisha, which were faster and more effective and I am glad that later on I shall be able to be employed in a big factory because I have the knowledge in using these machines which are also used there. I thank God for Rafiki Ya Maisha and their donations in helping me empower myself to be able to compete with others in life.” Judith Kiprob, 19 years old